"Lamentations is the debut recording of the four year-old trio version of Chicago-based clarinetist/composer James Falzone's longstanding Allos Musica ensemble. The group, which has performed at creative music venues all around Chicago features oud player/vocalist Ronnie Malley and hand drummer/ percussionistTim Mulvenna. Its music is a mix of Falzone's original compositions and collective improvisations inspired by Arabic musical forms such as the Longa and Muwashah, the work of Tunisian oud master Anouar Brahem and the cross-cultural significance of the lament in music and literature from around the world.

"I was working on a lot of this music in 2006 as U.S. forces were more and more entrenched in the Iraq war," Falzone recalls. "It did, and continues to, trouble me a great deal. During the build up to the invasion, I was studying Arabic music and seeking out Arabic neighborhoods where I could hear the music and buy CDs. I was in a grocery store watching Al Jazeera with the shopkeepers when some of the heaviest fighting was taking place. There is a phrase from Phil Ochs I like a lot and use in programs for this project: 'In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty.' This sums up why I put these laments together. I was lamenting what was happening in my country, the way we were thinking, but I'm not a very politically motivated man. For me, it comes out in creative ways."-Allos Musica

James Falzone

James Falzone's multi-facted career exists at the inter- section of a multitude of musical styles and traditions. An acclaimed member of Chicago's jazz and creative improvised music scene, he is also a veteran contem- porary music lecturer and clinician, the longtime Director of Music for Grace Chicago Church and a prolific, award-winning composer who has been commissioned by chamber groups and symphony orchestras among other institutions. When not performing or recording with groups such as Tim Daisy's chamber-jazz trio Vox Arcana, the French music ensemble Le Bon Vent and Dutch saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra's The Flatlands Collective, he is gracefully balancing his prodigious musical interests and experi- ences in his own Allos Musica ensemble, the umbrella for most of his musical experiments since 2000. His most recent release is last year's Tea Music, which features his all-star quartet KLANG playing original compositions inspired by clarinetist/composer Jimmy Guiffre's innovative small groups from the mid-1950s.